Firing Up Account-Based Selling with a Customer Data Platform: Your 2024 Guide

Account-based selling is more than just another B2B buzzword. It‘s a fundamental shift in go-to-market strategy that‘s delivering major results. Consider the following:

• Over 70% of B2B organizations are leveraging account-based programs as a key driver for revenue growth (ITSMA)
• 87% of account-based marketers say that ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments (TOPO)
• Companies using account-based selling see a 171% increase in annual contract value (Salesforce)

But here‘s the challenge: excelling at account-based selling is easier said than done. It requires getting laser-focused on engaging your most valuable accounts with hyper-personalized experiences across the full buyer‘s journey. And to do that, you need rich insights into your target accounts.

Enter the customer data platform (CDP). By unifying fragmented account data into a centralized view, a CDP gives your sales and marketing teams the deep account intelligence they need to identify, prioritize, and engage high-value prospects.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll break down exactly how a CDP can fire up your account-based strategy and revenue engine. Read on to learn:

• What makes a CDP uniquely suited to power account-based selling
• A step-by-step process for leveraging CDP data to target and engage key accounts
• Real-world examples and success stories from top B2B brands
• Best practices and expert tips to optimize your CDP-powered plays
• The key metrics to measure account-based success
• Actionable steps to kickstart your CDP journey today

Whether you‘re building an account-based program from the ground up, or looking to level up your existing strategy, you‘ll walk away with a practical roadmap for B2B success. Let‘s dive in.

Decoding the CDP: Why it‘s a Game-Changer for Account-Based Selling

Before we explore specific tactics and plays, let‘s align on what makes a CDP so critical for account-based success. At its core, a CDP does three things:

1. Ingests and unifies customer data from across the martech stack and beyond
2. Creates enriched account profiles through identity resolution and data modeling
3. Activates those insights to orchestrate personalized experiences across channels

While CRMs and marketing automation platforms can provide account-level data, they often present a fragmented view. A CDP is purpose-built to stitch together those disparate data points into a cohesive account profile.

For example, let‘s say your target account, Acme Inc., interacts with your brand across multiple touchpoints:

• Jane, a mid-level manager, attends your webinar
• The CFO downloads an eBook from your website
• An anonymous visitor from the Acme IP address visits your pricing page
• Their tech stack includes several of your integration partners

A CDP will ingest all of those data points – both known and anonymous – and resolve them into a unified view of Acme‘s engagement with your brand. You‘ll have a clear picture of their intent, needs, and buying stage.

What‘s more, advanced CDPs apply machine learning to further enrich account profiles with firmographic, technographic, and behavioral data from first- and third-party sources. The result is deep account intelligence to drive hyper-targeted selling.

In fact, high-performing B2B teams are 2.3X more likely to leverage a CDP for account insights compared to their peers (Dun & Bradstreet).

The Recipe for CDP-Powered Account-Based Selling

Now that you grasp the CDP difference, let‘s explore how to put it into practice. We‘ve deconstructed CDP-powered account-based selling into four core ingredients:

1. Insights: Turning raw account data into actionable intelligence
2. Identification: Defining and prioritizing high-value target accounts
3. Interactions: Orchestrating personalized, cross-channel account experiences
4. Impact: Measuring and optimizing based on account-level outcomes

For each pillar, we‘ll share a detailed process, expert tips, and real-world inspiration. Consider this your recipe book for account-based success.

Insights: Unifying Account Data for Personalization at Scale

Account-based selling starts with a deep understanding of your target accounts. But too often, that critical data is scattered across systems and teams. A CDP helps you create that elusive 360-degree account view.

Follow these steps to unlock rich account insights:

1. Map out all your account data sources, including your CRM, marketing automation platform, transaction systems, and more.

2. Integrate those systems with your CDP, either through pre-built connectors or custom APIs. This allows you to ingest both historical and real-time account data.

3. Use identity resolution to unify data points from across touchpoints and channels into account-level profiles, mapping leads to accounts.

4. Enrich your account data with intent, technographics, and lookalike attributes from third-party sources to get a fuller picture.

5. Create account-level segments based on common attributes, engagement, and intent to power targeted plays.

6. Visualize account engagement in a single dashboard, such as activity history, content interactions, and opportunity stage.

The end result is a crystal-clear view of each account‘s engagement with your brand, arming your sales and marketing teams for personalized outreach.

For example, Terminus, an ABM platform, uses its CDP to unify data from Salesforce, Marketo, 6Sense, and other systems. This allows them to assess account intent and readiness based on over 500 behavioral and firmographic attributes.

Key considerations for getting started:

• Prioritize integrating the systems that provide the richest account-level data and insights
• Focus on data hygiene and governance to ensure complete, accurate account profiles
• Structure your account data to support advanced segmentation and campaign personalization

Identification: Unleashing AI to Find and Prioritize Target Accounts

The next step is defining and tiering your target account list (TAL). Not all accounts are created equal – you need a way to zero in on those with the highest revenue potential and buying intent. That‘s where a CDP flexes its AI muscles.

Use this process to build an intelligent, data-driven TAL:

1. Analyze your historical customer data, including won/lost deals and high-value renewals, to understand common attributes and develop an ideal customer profile (ICP).

2. Use lookalike modeling to discover net-new accounts that share attributes with your ICP and high-intent behaviors.

3. Leverage predictive analytics to score accounts based on their product fit and likelihood to buy in a given time period.

4. Tier accounts into segments based on firmographics (e.g. company size, industry), intent (e.g. web visits, content downloads), and engagement (e.g. email clicks, sales interactions).

5. Identify key personas and decision-makers in each account to inform personalized selling motions.

6. Automatically alert sales reps when a target account exhibits surging intent or enters a new buying stage.

For example, Snowflake, the cloud data platform, uses its CDP to scan over 400,000 accounts and 18M+ contacts to identify those showing intent for their solutions.

They leverage machine learning to predict which accounts are most likely to buy based on technographic and behavioral fit. The result? 50% higher account-to-meeting conversion rates.

Tips for identifying your hottest accounts:

• Start with a narrow ideal customer profile and expand over time as you learn
• Prioritize intent data to focus on in-market accounts actively researching your category
• Go beyond job titles to identify the key personas involved in the buying process for your solutions

Interactions: Orchestrating Personalized Account Journeys

Once you‘ve defined your target account list, it‘s time to engage them with experiences tailored to their needs and buying stage. A CDP is the key to coordinating hyper-relevant interactions across channels and personas.

Here‘s how to use CDP-powered insights to create winning account plays:

1. Use account-level insights to develop a cross-channel journey map for each key persona, including touchpoints, content, and CTAs.

2. Leverage dynamic content to personalize your website, landing pages, and web app for each account based on industry, intent, and stage.

3. Tap into account-level segmentation to create hyper-targeted digital ad campaigns across paid search, social, and display.

4. Trigger sales outreach when an account hits a defined lead score or takes a high-value action, like visiting your pricing page or consuming a bottom-funnel asset.

5. Empower your sales team with account-specific insights and next-best-actions in their CRM workflow.

6. Automate targeted nurture journeys based on account-level engagement across channels.

OneLogin, an identity and access management provider, uses its CDP to trigger a personalized nurture flow when a target account downloads content.

Leads receive persona-specific emails and content recommendations based on their role and stage. Sales reps are alerted when an account is surging so they can time their outreach. The result? 4X higher lead-to-opportunity rates.

Best practices for engaging your target accounts:

• Focus on the channels and tactics that best suit each account persona
• Personalize content and CTAs based on the account‘s needs and intent
• Use lead-to-account matching to ensure a consistent experience across personas in an account
• Turn your best customers into advocates to influence target accounts

Impact: Measuring and Optimizing Account-Based Outcomes

Of course, all the account insights and interactions in the world don‘t matter if they don‘t drive revenue outcomes. This is where many account-based programs fall short – they focus on activity metrics vs true business impact.

A CDP enables you to track the metrics that matter for account-based selling:

1. Track account engagement score as a leading indicator of revenue potential, factoring in both quality and quantity of interactions.

2. Measure marketing-qualified accounts (MQAs) based on a combination of fit, intent, and engagement

3. Report on opportunity creation, pipeline velocity, and deal size tied directly to account-based plays

4. Use multi-touch attribution to understand the account journey and identify the programs and tactics that drive the most conversions

5. Create an account-based scorecard to track target account engagement, progression, and revenue quarter-over-quarter

For example, Gong, the revenue intelligence platform, uses its CDP to attribute pipeline and bookings directly to specific account-based plays.

They can see how personalized email, 1:1 sales outreach, and targeted LinkedIn ads drive opportunity creation and deal velocity for top accounts. This allows them to double down on what‘s working and optimize in real-time.

Secrets to demonstrating account-based ROI:

• Focus on revenue outcomes vs vanity metrics like CTR and open rates
• Align with sales on shared KPIs and service-level agreements (SLAs)
• Track leading indicators like account engagement and MQAs to spot trends and course-correct
• Report results to the C-suite to secure ongoing investment and buy-in

From Strategy to Action: Igniting Your CDP Journey

We‘ve equipped you with the core ingredients for cooking up CDP-powered account-based success: unified insights, intelligent targeting, personalized interactions, and revenue-centric measurement.

But how do you bring that recipe to life in your organization? Follow these steps to get started:

1. Audit your data maturity and martech stack to identify gaps and opportunities for a CDP
2. Align your sales and marketing teams on account-based KPIs and processes
3. Define your ICP using historical customer and revenue data
4. Choose a CDP that supports advanced account-based capabilities, like machine learning and cross-channel orchestration
5. Create a cross-functional taskforce to lead your CDP implementation and enablement
6. Craft a phased rollout plan to build quick wins and momentum
7. Continuously optimize your account-based tactics based on engagement and revenue insights

The B2B brands that will thrive in 2024 and beyond are those that harness the power of data to drive account-based engagement. A CDP is the rocket fuel for your ABM engine.

Don‘t get left behind. Make this the year you embrace a CDP to ignite your account-based strategy and revenue growth. Your target accounts are waiting.